With a reported 230,000 signups a day MySpace is more than just an internet phenomenon, a phrase that is banded about far too lightly these days. The social networking site started in back in 2003 by Tom Anderson, has grown to such an extent that it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for a figure in the region of $580 million in 2005 and the 100,000,000 user signed up in August 2006. A figure thought of as inflated at the time, the current valuation is considered to be nearer a cool $1 billion!
With such success they are clearly doing a huge amount correctly; enabling people to keep in contact easily with the ability to post photos, video and music it has quickly turned into a successful marketplace for aspiring musicians and film directors.Where MySpace fails is how difficult it is for the everyday user to create an attractive site that doesn’t give their audience a head ache after 5 minutes.
MySpace Overlay
Well here’s my first approach to offering something back to the community and hopefully the sanity of some of the 100 odd million users. Welcome to ‘Seloquent’…. something along the lines of a simple and eloquent design that hopefully demonstrates some of the potential for making MySpace a little less hectic and refined. You can check out Seloquent in action on my page at MySpace.
Seloquent is a MySpace div overlay (or myspace hack) that effectively lies over the top of your page, while still displaying the information to your friends that your want them to see. Including the ability for people to drop you a comment, it should hopefully be a pretty painless way to spruce up your MySpace page for the princely sum of nothing, gratis, FOC or in other words nothing!
Quick Instructions.
This is a quick version of the installation instructions required to install this overlay. Please read through all the instructions included with the download as well and post any problems you have below. I will try to answer all of them though this is distributed without any warranty.
- Download the Seloquent zip file below.
- Copy the contents of the ‘aboutme_css.txt’ into the ‘About Me’ section in your profile, making sure to erase everything that is already there.
- Copy the contents of the ‘idliketomeet_html.txt’ into the ‘I’d like to meet’ section in your profile, making sure to erase everything that is already there.
- Alter all references of ‘YOURFRIENDID’ with, yep you guessed it, your actual friend ID.
- Edit the appropriate sections to add your information.
- Save your profile.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. Woa, that sounds serious, what does this mean? Well you can use it, modify it and distribute it but you must continue to have the small print section at the bottom linking to this page or website. At the very least there should be a clear link to this page displayed in this section.
Download Seloquent Div Overlay
Version 1.3 of Seloquent
Custom MySpace Div Overlays
For more information about having a MySpace profile designed exclusively for your band, group or personal ‘myspace’ page, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Versions / Changes
Version 1.3 (dated 290307) another small alteration, adding the CC licensing information.
Version 1.2 (dated 020107) a small alteration to the readme file and the ‘Idliketomeet_html.txt – only nessesary to ‘upgrade’ if some of the links at the top of the page are not working.
Version 1.1 (dated 281206) update that fixes an issue with the comment box at the bottom of the overlay. Thanks to Cmoney in the comments for bringing it to my attention. See my follow up comment for those who want to edit the single line of html rather than download the new version and make all the customisations again.
Oh dear…looks like it wasn’t…
Right…Bish, I have a problem with your layout…but let me first say that your layout is one of the NICEST that I came across.
Simple and elegant!
But I have problems with the links at the top…you know the SEND MESSAGE & other links?
I tried removing the “amp;” and made sure that my FriendID is correct using the myspacegens you gave us somewhere above.
I placed the code in…but myspace still converts it to those mplinks?
Here’s what I placed into the html
“http://mail1.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mail.message&frien dID=376230651″
-> To send a message
“http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&fr iendID=376230651″
-> add to friends
“http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.addtogrou p&friendID=376230651″
-> add to group
“http://mail.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mail.forward&frien dID=376230651&f=forwardprofile”
-> forward to friends
“http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.addToFavor ite&friendID=376230651&public=0″
-> add to favourites
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
OH…forgot to add…
I noticed that when I put my cursor over the send message links of other people’s profile….they have this “MYFRIENDTOKEN” and a lot of gibberish after that.
Does this have any effect?
@crystal, without providing a link I can not be sure what you mean.
@chels, your profile is set to private so I can not view the profile to help.
@john, the profile is made up of html and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Place an image using html image tags or a background image in css. Try googling it.
@lincoln, I have emailed you explaining that it is possible but this is how I make my money as a web designer.
@Anthony Masure, thanks very much for letting me know. I haven’t had a change to fix it for FF3 which is not far away now. Will take a look hopefully this month.
@Kevin, your profile is set to private.
@Seán, you can get your friendID from here
@Shawn Michael Kirkbride, thanks a lot for the really kind words. The profile is made up of html and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) so it is very possible to insert images and add additional boxes. For the image you could use an html image tag inside the header div in the html or use a background image, play around with both to see what’s the best solution for you. As I don’t know the image size its difficult to be sure.
For the second box, just copy one of the sections and paste it again to have a second one. eg
@Thien Kai Wei, myspace automatically changes all links in profiles to msplinks.com links. Its to deter spam accounts.
Oh…
If that’s the case…you are saying there is no way to get the SEND MESSAGE and other links above to work?
I certainly hope not…
Bish,
Again, Thanks for being so awesome about this. I added a tag as listed below:
Shawn Michael Kirkbride
myspace
But the Image still does not show. How can I correct this?
Update: Just started using this overlay once again. Still loving it….
http://www.myspace.com/vgon
Ide like to have the bid borders at the side in black any help? I also cant seem to change the font color to white for the content boxes.
Bish, I have now added you as a friend on myspace, sorry about that. Not quite so easy for you to provide assistance if you cannot see what it is that I’m asking you to look at. Thanks much I appreciate it greatly.
Kevin
Bish,
I’ve been having a great time customizing your overlay. I’m having trouble with excess space at the bottom of the page. Any ideas? Really appreciate any help.
Desiderio
@Thien Kai Wei, no thats just the reason they get changed. What they get changed to shouldn’t break the links but if the original links are wrong then it wont work as msplinks.
@Shawn Michael, I don’t see the code in your profile for any photos / images. Have you updated the code and then saved it properly. Which section did you add it to? the header?
@Offx1, try changing the background color of the body. looks as though its set to white. With the color try setting the text color to white.
looks great BTW.
@kevin, thanks I can see your profile now. This is the simplest way to insert an image into the profile. Photobucket if I remember rightly even gives you the code to insert in your profile. Good luck.
@desiderio, your profile is set to private I can not access it.
hey bish. man, i love your design… very stylish and minimalistic…
been looking to find something like this…i’m new to the whole myspace
thing so i would need your help coz i got stuck… i’ve put in the codes in the edit profile in the about me section, and the gray template page is up… the only thing is that it overrides the middle sections of the options so i can’t access the ‘about me’ and i’ d like to meet’… i’m sure i did something wrong setting it up… what shall i do???? thanks heaps man…. j
Alright, so…whenever someone goes to leave me a comment it shoots them to the all well known :
Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.
This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group.
I have read all the comments regarding the comment problem but have made sure that everything is how you have it. I am almost to the point of just getting a comment box from another site. Do you think that you could help me out here?
I was able to put a background image in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) part but instead, I’d like to put up a slideshow from RockYou or PhotoBucket but I don’t know the code for that.
Does anyone know how to code it?
Thank you!
Oh, I want to place it in the .header part, where is says YOUR NAME and underneath MYSPACE
Thanks!
Bish,
I know you have heard this a million times but i love your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Its just beautiful.
But I am not the best at coding and have been having issues. I use Fire Fox 3, and Wasnt sure if you had any updates available for it, due to the fact you can still see a portion of the underlay. I also would like to have a display picture. I apologize for being fairly useless in this situation, but any words of wisdom would be much appreciated.
Matt
Sorry i actually fixed part of the underlay. But now the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is set a little too high and overlaps the navigation bar.
Hey does anyone know how to fix the firefox bug. My page looks awesome on explorer but something is not cool with firefox.
Hi Bish! So I’m completely new at this… I’ve always used the “standard” MySpace layouts, but I found this one and have been working on customizing someone’s page for the past day or so. (You wouldn’t be able to tell by the looks of it! Lol.) I’m having issues with the navigation links up top. I made sure to include the friend id in each line and still, no luck. Some of them work, but the others are faulty. I noticed you have a Version 1.2 available to download. Where can I access it?
Is there any reason why the layout looks perfect in IE, but is completely distorted when viewed in Mozilla?
Thanks for your help, babe! Look forward to hearing from you! =D
how do i add a friends list to your overlay?
hi. how do i add a friends list to your overlay?
I really wanted to try to do this by myself, but… I really don’t want to ruin my page with a player, so i’d like one song to play in the background once. I’ve tried so many different ways… help! I might even have the right code (I’ve tried many), I just don’t know where to stick it! lol
thanks for the layout it is awesome but i am having trouble changing the color of the text on the small print and comment section. any help would be great.
Excellent, we took it, modified it and mashed it up to fit our charity myspace page – take a look and let us know what you think? http://www.myspace.com/allstarkidsuk
Is it possible to add a friend list box somehow? and possible a select few comments?
Cool setup, I like how it can be more centered…I have a problem I have been unable to fix. My page is black and so I had to change all the text coloring to grey. I got it all but the text under Interests,Movies, and Linkages I cannot seem to find where to edit it. Can you help?
Excellent layover. Absolutely brillant!
I have one little problem though. The problem is the top box (header or whatever you all it). For some reason (and unlike Myspace.com/Eminentstyle) the box is in front of the buttons at the top.
See for your self: http://www.myspace.com/kbhnord
I have tried removing everything and using the clean code from the zip-file, but the result is the same.
What can I do to fix this problem?
I am trying to center my div overlay with the ads above it. I cant figure out how to make it do it correctly…could you help me please?
my myspace is http://www.myspace.com/joshuataylordixon
hey, i made a div layout for my band, but im not sure how to put the music player in. can anyone help?
Hey I redid my page but none of the links work! Do you know whats wrong I looked at all the URLS and they’re all msplinks so I’m not exactly sure what to do but when anyone clicks on any of the links it just takes them to their home page! Any suggestions?
hey,
i followed the steps exactly, and the layout won’t show.
the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) isn’t working, it shows up under my about me section as ..
help please !
CJ, what is your MySpace profile address? If I can’t see the problem it is difficult for me to fix.
Can someone help? I got the overlay to show up, but I can’t figure out how to make it look right. I put the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) into the CSS Box under “customize profile, and I put the html into the “About me” box under “edit profile”. http://www.myspace.com/bellinghamalive
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Grant
Grant, you have to do it in Profile 1.0, using the Who I’d Like to Meet box also. It doesn’t work in 2.0, it seems.